In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • The Parrot Notes a Toad on the Hop

    This stanza was written last night after I read that Mr Toad was about to head off to meet Mrs Merkel and Mr Macron, etc. And Mr Toad is going to tell them that the Irish back stop was “undemocratic” etc.

    But today it turns out that there has also been an exchange of letters between Mr Toad and Mr Tusk. Mr Tusk’s reply has arrived today. He has performed an adult’s role in saying no.

    Mr Toad’s fleshly visit to Europe is due to start tomorrow. Will it make any difference ? Young Dom and Mr Toad do seem confident that all the nations of the continent of which we are still a (tiresome) part will succumb to the nonsense in the end.

    And if the nations don’t ? It will be so sad, won’t it ? And our self-inflicted disaster will be all the EU’s fault, they’ll say. And shall we believe them ?

    Posted:

  • The Parrot Notes Mr Toad Grown Larger


    Today, UK Law seems to have decided that it is not a penal offence for an accountable holder of public office, such as a member of parliament, to lie to or otherwise seek to mislead, a sovereign people. This despite the fact that all members of parliament have sworn an oath to tell the truth, so that lying is a breaking of that oath ; and in the House of Commons, it is normal practice for members to address each other as “honourable” since honourable people can be trusted and dishonourable can’t. Today’s judgement seems to imply that lying to the people is on the same level as telling them the truth. Honour and Dishonour are just equal combatants at the hustings.

    Marcus Ball is to be congratulated on bringing this case. We are all the losers if he is defeated in his attempt to restore honour and trust to our political system. Democracy depends entirely on words that can be trusted.

    As for this stanza, it too is concerned with truth-telling. Mr Johnson, our new Prime Minister, has twice been sacked for lying. In any occupation apart from politics and crime, he would now be unemployable. The reference to Mr Toad is to one of the leading characters in the Edwardian children’s book called “Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. The pun is quite a fertile one – there’s “toadie” ; there’s “lying toad”…

    Posted:

  • The New Berserkers Take the Stage

    Mr Toad and Mr Cummings having been making an impression. The “Remainers” are still stuttering and split. Can it get worse ?  It can. Mr Toad’s cunning plan has been to come out as a puffed up war lord, using his cabinet as his own personal commando unit. They wear identical body armour and are leaving piles of pooh all over the public park. “No Deal,” the constitution, the law and the nation’s welfare have all become tactics, all in question as the gleeful blades swing. Mr Toad is running riot.

    Posted:

  • The Parrot on Sanctuary

    This piece looks back to when John Skelton wrote his poem “Speak, Parrot” in the sixteenth century. All these rhyme royal stanzas about Brexit I’m writing, refer to that poem, in one way or another. It is supposed that Skelton wrote it in the precincts of Westminster, where the medieval laws of sanctuary were still operating.

    In other words, he was living under the jurisdiction and hence protection of the church. The powers and laws of the state did not hold sway there. He could therefore consider himself safe, even as he attacked the head of state, Cardinal Wolsey, from within his parrot’s cage.

    Is Westminster still a place where truth is safely spoken ?

    Posted:

  • The Parrot and the Elephant

    This piece was written a few days after Mr Johnson became Prime Minister. Mr Toad seemed quite puffed up by now, that jolly mop on top sticking out in all directions. He was centre stage and the cameras were following him everywhere. And again we kept hearing that “Labour Must…” And “Now’s the Time…” but no one seemed to know where old Jez had got to…

    Posted:

  • Mr Toad Leapfrogs the Stars

    Since his accession, Mr Johnson had been upping the ante with regard to a “No Deal Brexit” and spraying money here, there and everywhere, as if Austerity had never existed.

    But where was all that Tory money coming from, with our economy tanking ? What about these many years of austerity cuts we’d been suffering from ? Those savings that had to be made by “strong and stable” Tory government, at whatever the social cost ? Those disapproving words about the money tree ? Those lectures about the leaking roof ? Suddenly the roof had disappeared. It was all leak, unlimited sky and rude-boy fantasies.

    Posted:

  • The Parrot Meets Mr Toad

    This piece was written immediately after we heard that Boris Johnson had won the Tory leadership contest. The image of Mr Toad, a rather puffed up character in the children’s book “The Wind in the Willows” had already occurred to me.

    The Tories seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of plagues with which to assail the UK. Here was their latest.

    On my facebook page I wrote : For their next trick the Tories have lumbered us with a trumped up Mr Toad. A tousled Etonian toad. A twice-sacked-for-lying toad. A Trump toady. A toad who once travelled as far as Myanmar and while playing with his mobile in the temple there started to recite “The Road to Mandalay.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson-caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-poem-in-burmese-temple-video

    Posted:

  • The Parrot Studies the Human Brain

    This stanza was written just minutes before it was announced that Mr B. Johnson, sacked twice in the past for being a liar, had just become Prime Minister of the UK. He had been elected to that position, not by the country, but by members of the Tory Party, some of whom had only just joined the membership, adamant they wanted a No Deal Brexit and confident that Mr Johnson would be able and willing to provide it.

    It appeared that his assertions and approach conjured up some sort of comfort zone for many of them, despite the fact that, by any normal standard, this magician has shown himself serially untrustworthy, even perhaps a fraud.

    Furthermore, we all surely know that lies, fantasy and bluster do not provide a comfort that lasts. At some point, you are obliged to wake up and return to reality.

    The “segments twain” in the stanza’s third line refer to a book by Iain McGilchrist called “The Master and his Emissary.” It is about the human brain and its two hemispheres.

    The “master” is the right brain hemisphere, the “emissary” the left.

    McGilchrist describes how the two hemispheres are neither equal nor simply complementary. And they are actually at odds, in tension, their partnership in question. The emissary doesn’t believe the master is necessary. The emissary counts and measures and fears. That’s all we are, or need to be, it “thinks”.

    The emissary’s attempts to take over from the master threaten to destroy all of us, both sides.
     

    Posted: